The phone woke me a little after 11 PM. Since my friends and relatives know that I go to sleep at nine, the call could mean bad news, maybe a death. Or maybe it was just a wrong number. God let it be a wrong number. With a nervous hesitation, I picked up the phone.
“Tommy, I’m going to kill you!”
Relief, the voice with the murderous intent belonged to my Little Sister. She is also one of the few people who still call me Tommy. She was born when I was fourteen, and she will always be my Little Sister and I will always be her Tommy. From her tone of voice, I knew that Big Brother had scored again.
“Tommy,” she continued, “Tonight, you embarrassed me in front of my husband and son.” The powers I have as Big Brother sometimes amaze even me. Even though I was asleep and hundreds of miles away, I was able to embarrass her. Better yet, I was able to do this in front of her husband and son. Great, I should get extra points!
From the beginning, I played the role of Big Brother with joyful relish. I gained my initial experience with my other sister, Camille, who was born only three years after me. But three years were still good enough to qualify me as Big Brother.
I established my reputation as Big Brother at an early age. One Saturday when I was eight, my cousins and I went to a movie matinee that featured three Westerns. When we got home, we played cowboys and Indians. I was an Indian Brave and attacked my sister’s room, where I scalped all her dolls. That Saturday, the Indians won. In the years to come, I found that this massacre of innocent dolls had, beneficial side effects: my sisters never asked me to baby-sit their children. Come to think of it, none of my relatives ever asked me to baby-sit.
By the time my Little Sister was born, my qualifications as Big Brother were well documented. Now, in response to her late night phone call, I asked, “What did I do now?”
“Andy and I went to pick up Dale at work tonight,” she replied. My brother-in-law, Dale, works at Disney World as a chef, and my nephew, Andy, was ten at the time. My Little Sister continued with her story. That night her husband had to prepare a banquet for more than 1000 people. They boiled live lobsters, one for each person, over 1000 lobsters! While he drove home, Dale started to tell her about his rough day. He spent the day rummaging to find and collect enough big pots among the other restaurants in Disney World. In the evening, he had to get everything timed just right to serve all the people. Before he finished, my Little Sister stopped him to ask, “How did you stand all the screaming!”
Over the phone, I said “Huh?” I was still half a sleep.
“Tommy, don’t you remember the time when Mommy bought the live lobsters?”
The pages of my memory began to flip quickly back through my mind. They stopped on a page etched almost 30 years before when we lived in Freeport, Long Island. My mom was a great cook, but she cooked lobster only once. My memory of that lobster dinner so long ago began to crystallize. There was the kitchen, the heart of our home. There was Mom, Dad, my sister who had her dolls scalped, and my Little Sister, who was about five or six years old. I do not remember the reason for the lobster dinner. It must have been for a very special occasion, especially since we did not have any company for dinner. It was only the five of us, and, of course, the five lobsters.
I answered, “Yes, I think so.” I still didn’t make a connection.
While my mind searched the memories of a special dinner so long ago for clues, my Little Sister continued her story. “Dale looked at me as if I were crazy and asked me what I meant by screaming lobsters. He asked me if I meant that they make a hissing sound. I said no, that they really squealed, and very loudly too. I told him about Mommy’s lobster dinner, and when we dropped the lobsters in the pot of boiling water, they started screaming. Dale started laughing, and said that lobsters don’t scream. He was laughing so hard that he had to stop driving; he pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot and just laughed. Of course Andy started laughing too.”
Now I was remembering. It wasn’t the lobster dinner; it was cooking the lobsters that I needed to focus on. There was the old gas stove, the basket with the live lobsters, and the two biggest pots my Mom had, filled with boiling water.
My Little Sister continued, “Dale asked me who was actually cooking the lobsters. I told him that Camille was. He then asked me if my Big Brother was there. I told him that you were the one who was in fact dropping the lobsters into the pot.”
My Little Sister was now laughing as she talked. She went on, “I still didn’t catch on.” She paused to laugh some more. In the background, I could hear her husband and son laughing also. In a deep voice, trying to sound like her husband, she continued, “ ‘Don’t you get it. It was Tom! I can picture your Big Brother standing behind you, squealing.’ ”
Now the kitchen scene of 30 years ago was in focus. There was the stove, the basket of lobsters, and the big pots of boiling water with lemons floating in them. There was my sister Camille with long handle barbecue prongs in the ready. There was my Little Sister trying to watch everything, but her eyes didn’t even reach the stovetop. There was Big Brother, standing tall above his Little Sister, dropping the five live lobsters into the pots.
“Come on, you don’t think I would do that to my Little Sister, do you?” I responded. Big Brother was not ready to confess to anything, not even after 30 years.
“Yes, I do!” Little Sister responded without hesitation.
“Well, maybe it’s just that we had Maine lobsters and they knew that they were in hot water. Your husband must have been cooking Southern lobsters they’re slower and not too smart,” I said. Her husband was a born Floridian, and I was ready to rekindle the Civil War, rather than confess anything.
She called to her husband; “He says Southern lobsters are too dumb to scream.”
I heard him respond, “Tell him that Florida lobsters are brave and too proud to scream.”
She started to repeat his response, but I told her that I heard him.
Apparently deciding to end this little post-Civil War skirmish, my sister said, “It’s just like Santa Claus.”
I knew what she meant. It may have been the Christmas of the same year as our lobster dinner or the year after. My Little Sister was at the age where she was just beginning to doubt her belief in Santa Claus. Some of her friends had told her that there was no Santa. When she would ask us, her family, we would continue to say yes, of course there was a Santa Claus. We all wanted her to believe, at least for one more Christmas. There is something about a child’s wide-eyed innocence at Christmas time. Of course, being a teenager at the time, I would never admit that I also wanted to see her joy in opening Santa’s gifts under the Christmas tree.
That Christmas Eve, while my Little Sister was asleep, the rest of us were putting the finishing touches on the Christmas tree and other decorations around our home. All the presents were under the tree, and the question was, should we wake her up or let her sleep until morning? Since we all knew that she would rise early and sneak down to see the presents before we got up, we decided to wake her up. As I said, we all wanted to enjoy seeing her wide-eyed joy one more time.
Without hesitation, I volunteered to wake up our littlest family member. I ran upstairs to her bedroom. Just when I was about to wake her up, I spotted from the bedroom window the red light of an airplane gliding across the sky. Shaking my Little Sister, I said “Wake up! Wake up! Santa’s just leaving!”
Pulling her out of bed and pushing her towards the window I shouted, “Look! Look! There goes Santa. See Rudolf’s red nose?” My Little Sister always said that she saw Santa, Santa’s sled with all the presents, and the reindeer, including Rudolf and his red nose. Looking out the window that Christmas Eve, I was the only one who saw an airplane’s warning light floating through the winter sky.
Once Santa disappeared, she scampered downstairs to the Christmas tree and presents. While opening her presents, she proudly announced that she had seen Santa. I reassured my family that we did indeed see Santa. The following days she would tell her friends that she saw Santa, the real Santa, not the ones in the department stores. When they laughed and teased her, she would tell them that her big brother saw Santa too. That was proof enough for her.
Over the phone I said to the woman who was still my Little Sister, “Well, it looked like Santa’s sled to me.” As I said before, I was still not ready to confess anything.
She ended the late night phone call laughing and promising to get even with me. I was going to remind her that she did wake me up from a sound sleep, but I just laughed and said good night. I knew that as the Big Brother, I might be ahead in teasing points, but my Little Sister was far ahead in giving me fond memories.
If my Little Sister had not called me about the screaming lobsters, I would have never thought about our family’s one and only lobster dinner. I went to sleep pondering whether or not I should further embarrass my Little Sister by telling other family members about her screaming lobsters. I did not have to ponder for long.
Extending her belief in Santa Claus for one year was one of my greatest accomplishments. And to find out that for 30 years she believed in screaming lobsters, I had reached a new plateau. Oh, it’s grand being a Big Brother. What power! What joy!